ROME – The Saudi foreign minister says the owners of a hijacked oil tanker are negotiating with the pirates that are holding it.

Prince Saud Al-Faisal spoke Wednesday after talks in Rome with his Italian counterpart.

Asked if he could confirm reports that a ransom had been demanded, he said the owners of the tanker “are negotiating on the issue” but did not elaborate.

He says the Saudi government does not like to negotiate with “pirates, terrorists or hijackers” but the owners of the tanker are “the final arbiter” on the issue.

The supertanker, which was seized with more than $10 million worth of crude oil aboard, is just one of a eight ships that pirates have captured in the last 12 days along the world’s most treacherous waterway.

The pirates anchored the oil rig off their haven on the Somali coast and prepared for a long showdown with the ship’s owner.

But they suffered one defeat. An Indian warship in the Gulf of Aden fought Somali pirates and destroyed their vessel in a brief battle, officials in New Delhi said today. Two accompanying speedboats fled.

Shipping executives were stunned by the explosion of piracy. “This is completely unprecedented,” said Michael Howlett of the International Maritime Bureau.

So far this year, 96 ships have been attacked off the Somali coast. That compares with 31 last year and only 10 in 2006.

The latest hijackings bring the number of ships being held by pirates to 18, with 355 crew members. That includes a Ukrainian cargo ship that’s been held for nearly two months, even though it’s surrounded by US and other warships.

In one of the latest incidents, the Hong Kong-owned ship Delight was captured in the Gulf of Aden along with its crew of 25.

It was bringing wheat to Iran., but is now steaming toward Somalia. In the other, the fishing boat, with a crew of 16, was hijacked as it traveled toward the Mideast.

Heavily armed Somali pirates routinely seize ships in the gulf. They typically reach the target ships in speedboats and fire weapons until the captain surrenders – and then demand ransoms of $1 million or more.

The rise in attacks comes despite the presence of an armada of US and NATO warships in the region.

Sunday’s seizure of the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star was unusual because it happened 450 miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, well beyond the pirates’ favorite waters.

The ship and its full load of 2 million barrels of oil is by far the biggest prize seized by the Somali brigands.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal called on the world to unite against the surge in high-seas attacks.

“Piracy is against everybody. Like terrorism, it is a disease that has to be eradicated,” he said.

South Korea is planning to send navy ships to waters off Somalia to protect commercial vessels from pirates, and Japan is considering a similar move, officials said. But Western naval officials said they fleets are spread too thin to deal with the pirate bands.

“The pirates will go somewhere we are not,” said Royal Navy Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of Britain’s Combined Maritime Forces in the Mideast.

About 20,000 ships navigate past the Horn of Africa – a k a the Somali Peninsula – each year, making it an essential sea lane for the world’s economy.

But a major Norwegian shipping group decided yesterday it wasn’t worth the risk.

Odfjell SE ordered its more than 90 tankers to take the long route – sailing around the southern tip of Africa.

“We will no longer expose our crew to the risk of being hijacked and held for ransom by pirates in the Gulf of Aden,” said Terje Storeng, Odfjell’s president and chief executive.

The longer route adds 12 to 15 days to a tanker’s trip, at a cost of between $20,000 and $30,000 a day, experts say.

The hijackers of the Sirius Star yesterday were visited by two small boats.

Eighteen men, presumed to be fellow pirates, climbed aboard on a rope ladder.

“I have been fishing here for three decades, but I have never seen a ship as big as this one,” said local fisherman Abdinur Haji.